NEW EMPIRE OF ABYSSINIA. 61 



kedous Yakoub who is nearer God than I am, greater than me, and 

 bora in luxury, goes on foot from Massaona to the country of the 

 Bojos, and shall I disdain to make an hour's journey without my 

 mule ?" Oubie, before whom all Tigre trembled, humbly dismounted 

 when passing the door of Mgr. de Jacobis, 



This apostle had only one defect : he believed more in the eflBcacy 

 of diplomatic manoeuvring than in that of evangelical teaching, as a 

 propagandist. He commenced in Abyssinia with a grave error: ho 

 wished to give a turn to matters which it would have been more 

 worthy of him to break with altogether. The patriarchal seiit was 

 vacant. Oubie, who aimed at being crowned Negus, announced that 

 he would be at the expense of an embasay entrusted with the task of 

 obtaining from Alexandria a new abouna, in the person of a young 

 Copt of Millie, named Salama : but, being on bad terms with Egypt, 

 he did not know who to send with any hope of success. He applied 

 then to Mgr. de Jacobis, and begged him to go himself — he, ap- 

 pointed abouna by Eome — to bring his rival. Mgr. de Jacobis 

 accepted this strange proposition without hesitation. He said to 

 himself that, whatever action he took, a new alouna would never- 

 theless arrive ; and that it was better to gain his sympathy, or, at 

 least, his neutrality than to make himself an enemy. 



Salama, the present patriarch of Ethiopia, is one of the worst spe- 

 cimens of the Coptic clergy. Proud, violent, greedy and quarrelsome, 

 he divides his time between usur}', intrigue and commerce. And 

 euch commerce ! He carries on the slave trade, removes the sacred 

 vessels froai the churches, and sends them by bales to Egypt : one 

 of these packages was seized and confiscated about ten years ago afc 

 Djeddah by the French consul, M. Eochefc d'Hericourt. The morals 

 of Salama are in such bad repute that, one day, his confessor. Father 

 Joseph, revealed, in a crowded public place at Gondar, his latest 

 confession, and informed the faithful that the Patriarch had nine 

 mistresses, of whom two were nuns. His ignorance is proverbial; 

 and the memJiirs (professors of theology) maliciously submit to him 

 questions beyond his ability to solve, from which he extricates him- 

 sielf by excommunicating the questioners. Since the accession of 

 Theodore the Second, Salama has conspired ten times against him. 

 The most diverse judgments are passed as to bis religious faith : most 

 think him a protesliant, since at Cairo he was a pupil at the protest- 

 ant school of M. Lieder, and since the British consulate at that city 



